TPK

Author's Note: Our heroine starts off somewhat discombobulated and somewhat unsexy. Do not fear! She gets quite sexy before the sexy sex begins. I'm not going to make you read a story about a grossified corpse. There are other stories for that. Now, read on...and enjoy.

*

Dart opened one eye and wondered if she was dead. After a few seconds of looking at the large, burly, well oiled, golden skinned, four winged, flaming haired, sword wielding demiangel, Dart knew that she was dead. She twisted her body out of the prtezel it had been folded into and lost her head.

Literally, it started to bounce and roll away from her body. She reached for herself -- but the view was hideously disorientating. She saw sky, then ground, then angel, then-

"Ow!" She grunted. Something had smacked the top of her head. Before she could speak, she felt something clack her jaws together and saw that she was rolling down a very long flight of stairs. She felt something grab her hair and saw her own body below her. It looked...pretty all right, all things considered. Yes, her left arm was hanging on by a tiny thread of stringy flesh. Yes, her right leg might have been still dribbling with acid. Yes, her breasts and belly had both been cooked into something closer to hamburger than half-elven flesh.

BUT!

She...

Okay, no, she couldn't think of any upside to this.

With a thought, she made her body sit up and the angel who was holding her head by the hair jammed it onto her neck. She put her right hand on her head to root it there and got her knees under her.

"Welcome to-" The demiangel started.

"OW!" Dart winced. "By Tyson, can you keep it down? I'm right here. Ow." She shook her head and grabbed at her scalp again to keep it from tumbling right off.

The demiangel crossed his arms over his barrel wide chest and frowned. His was a face built for frowning -- wide featured, full lipped, with eyes that looked like pools of storm-clouds, swirling and crackling. His wings flared around him and a golden light exploded from his body. Dart was sure it was supposed to look incredibly impressive, but what awe she had been born with had been beaten out of her at a young age. Whatever had been left after her adoptive parents and her life in the slums had been chewed up and spat out. Like her, now that she thought about it.

"I am Helmspear, and this is the plane of Elysihalla." He boomed out the words as if the universe owed him something. Dart closed her eyes -- but that didn't help her pounding headache.

"Why am I here?" She asked, her voice resigned. "I'd have thought I'd be bound for Limbo."

"You have been spoken for."

"Oh god no," Dart whispered.

In the background, she could hear a voice -- a single name dragged out and dopplered up to an almost childlike squeal of delight. "DaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrRT!"

Even with her spine tensed and her knees locked, Gabriel slamming into her spine and wrapping his arms around her body in a bone crushing hug knocked her ass over tip. Not only did her head go flying -- arcing up in what would have been a game ending shot of postball, but in this case merely gave her a great view of the plane of Elysihalla -- but it also put pad to her left arm, which ripped out of the socket and went rolling and thumping down the golden staircase that lead to the plains of Eternal Battle, where all the chaotic good morons ended up so they could thump each other for all eternity.

When her head came down, it was into the middle of a pond that some inconsiderate monster had put near the base of the stairs. Her chin bumped against the muddy bottom and she felt hands pawing at her shoulders, then shaking her. Then she felt her body being slung over someone's shoulders. She tried to ignore the phantom feelings, instead spending the time looking around the pool. A neriad was being busily sick in the corner of the pond -- filling the water with a thick chalky mire.

Not exactly an auspicious start for her death.

###

"And then," Gabriel said. "The dragon ate me. He started with the head, but he had no teeth, so it ended up being more unpleasant than damaging..." He paused as he wiggled Dart's head to the side -- shaking it so that the last of the water dripped from her ear. "But then came the stomach acid! Ugh!"

"Why didn't you run, you moron?" Dart snarled as she was jammed back onto her neck-stump.

"Well, I remembered what you said -- about the adventurer insurance?" He grinned at her. "That was brilliant. Darkothernacankoran is going to think twice about torturing and killing adventurers once we get raised and reveal his plan to replace the King and rule the world."

"One tiny problem," Dart stuck her right pinkie finger into her ear and fished out a bit of water, flicking it away. "I didn't buy adventurer insurance. There is no such thing as adventurer insurance. I made it up. I lied. Generated it from whole cloth. I tried to buy us FIFTEEN fucking SECONDS of breathing room!"

Gabriel's large, doe-like eyes closed, then opened. It might have been a blink, but it had taken thirty or forty seconds longer than most blinks not performed by livestock. Not that Dart was willing to say that Gabe didn't manage to somehow beat them in the stupid race. He opened his mouth, closed it, then furrowed his brow.

"So...what you're saying is I shouldn't have then tried to beat the dragon to death with the chair?" He asked.

"YES!" Dart shouted. "And then you had to fucking ruin my DEATH by dragging me to to to..." She paused. "This...place is not as bad as I would have expected from the stories."

She swept her one attached arm out -- bringing in the immense green fields of brilliantly colored grass, with broad trees dotting the land here and there. There were hills and mountains in the distance -- but no sign of the endless armies of goodhearted warriors coming together for an excited battle a day, where they would waken from their wounds without a single scar. The only sign of habitation was the golden stairs that lead off the edge of the rectangular plane of greenery that made up the entirety of the dimension -- the stair lead down to the realm of neutral good, apparently.

There was another stair at the other end of Elysihalla, which lead up to the realm of lawful good.

None of them were anywhere that Dart wanted to spend her death.

"Well, that's because everyone's too busy at the..." Gabe paused, scratching his scalp. As he considered what he was going to say, Dart took a few moments to eyeball him. He didn't seem to have anything wrong with him -- no sign of stomach acid, no melted face, nothing. His head wasn't even knocked off!

"...at the?" Dart prompted.

Gabe rubbed the back of his neck. "Okay, I didn't want to break this to you, Dart, since you revealed that we didn't have adventurer insurance. I mean, you were already mad, and I didn't want to make you madder, but-"

Dart pushed herself to her feet, hand on her head to keep it from rolling off her neck.

"Gabe," she said, her voice a low growl. "Tell me. What did you do?"

"It's less what I did and more, uh, who I invited!" Gabe said, nodding and beaming at her. "See, uh, it was kind of, uh..." his voice dropped to a quiet mutter. "Total party kill."

"Oh, you didn't." Dart groaned.

###

"Dart, my dear, you seem to be a bit discombobulated. And burned. And slashed up. And-"

"I KNOW, WOLF!"

Dart held her head onto her shoulders as she glared at Wolf -- who was looking entirely too comfortable in the beer-hall of one of Elysihalla's endless legion of cookie cutter chaotic good booze hounds. But if there was one thing that Wolf had been good at, from the first time that Dart met him to now, it had been being comfortable in new places. He had been comfortable in the slave pens of the Intellect Exoriators. He had been comfortable stripped down to a loincloth for the Pleasure Domes of the Dark Elves. He had been comfortable in the High Patriarch's Court in the Astral College. The problem was that he was comfortable everywhere -- including, for example, in the beds of half the noblewomen that the party had ever met.

The married noblewomen.

"I-I, I....I..." Shy little Willow -- who was sitting across from Wolf -- tried to speak. Dart was used to ignoring the druid. Instead, she leaned forward to scowl at her former adventuring companion.

"Why didn't you stop him, Wolf? You knew we didn't have adventure insurance!"

"Well, darling," Wolf said, his voice dry as he picked up a mead cup. He blew some froth off the top, then sipped from it. "I was distracted."

"DISTRACTED!?" Dart let go of her own head in her shock -- but that ended up being a bad idea. It fell from her shoulders and thumped onto the table -- upside down. She saw Wolf wincing as he eyed at her.

"Eugh," he said. "That does kill the mood a tad, eh?" He looked at Willow. Willow looked green -- which was less impressive for a half-dryad who was already pretty green. She put her hands on her cheeks as she tried to form words. But before she could so much squeak, Gabriel sat down next to her with a bleary expression on his face -- he had been drawn away from the group when they arrived in the beer-hall. Why became apparent as he mumbled to Willow.

"And then the valk said that I couldn't so much as..." he slurred, kissing Willow's cheek. Willow put her finger on his nose and gently pushed his face away from her face -- her cheeks turning from green to beat red.

Dart was getting used to picking her own head up. She turned it around -- ignoring the way the swaying motion of her vision without a corresponding motion of her body was making her stomach queasy -- and planted it back on her neck.

"Much better!" Wolf said, lifting his tankard to her. Several conversations started at the same time -- Dart, Wolf, Willow and Gabriel all speaking at the same time.

"-question is why, when we ALL got savaged by a freaking BLACK DRAGON-"

"-did you know, honey, that-"

"-and yet here I am-"

"-u-uh, please, I w-w-wa-wa-"

"-since you don't...urk. One second, going to vomit-"

"-the headless thing really works-"

"-WHY AM I THE ONLY-"

"EVERYONE SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

The entire table went silent -- and silence cascaded past said table to other tables as every single gloriously heroic soul of Elysihalla turned to look at the table. The scream echoed faintly and slowly, Willow seemed to realize that everyone was looking at her. She coughed, slightly, her cheeks turning a pale red along the edges. "Okay," she said. "Firstly, Wolf, you're being an ass. Gabriel, I won't have sex with you while you're drunk and-"

Gabriel vomited a thick stream of rainbows into a nearby potted plant.

"-and Dart, these assholes completely forgot to take you to the pools of restoration," she finished. "They're why we aren't all chewed up and crushed."

Dart turned her head with her hands to glare at Gabriel. "There's a pool of restoration on this stupid plane of stupid people?"

Gabriel wiped his mouth slowly and stood up, his eyes bleary and glinting with rainbow lights. He blinked a few times, coughed, and said: "Well, because I thought everyone knew it. Uh. Come on then."

Willow stood up and Wolf held up a single finger to delay them as he downed his flagon. Once he had, he wiped his mouth and stood up. He smiled down at Dart and she glared at his chest -- refusing to admit that the asshole was taller than her. And sexy. Stupid dark elves. He patted her shoulder and one of her arms jarred loose then thumped to the ground. Okay, that made it easier. Dart glared up at Wolf. "You're picking that up or I shove it up your ass."

###

"All right," Dart said, pursing her lips as she eyed the line that snaked out from the copse of verdant trees that concealed the pool of restoration. "It is official. I hate this plane. I hate this plane so very very much."

"Is not so bad," Gabriel said, tottering from side to side as three more fallen warriors stepped into place behind their party. One of them had been decapitated and was holding his severed, still dripping head under one arm, while another one had a sword buried in their shoulder up to where their heart would have been if it wasn't currently dribbling down the front of their chest. A third had a spear through the stomach and kept muttering apologies when his shifting in the line bumped the iron reinforced butt of the spear into the back of the person behind him.

"We're going to be in line for hours," Dart grumbled. "And these idiots chose to get hacked to pieces in the afterlife. At least MY injuries are from an actual adventure." She tapped her foot on the ground and the line shifted forward one. Dart scowled, looking at Wolf -- who was reading a small pocket book that he had pulled from who knows where. "Wolf." Wolf turned the page, not looking up. "Wolf!" Wolf looked up, blinking at her.

"Yes?"

"You're a thief," she said.

"A rogue, thank you very much," Wolf said, his ears twitching up slightly.

Wolf rubbed his chin as he tucked his book away, surveying the crowd with a critical eye. "They're mostly distracted," he said, quiet and businesslike. "Zoned out -- they wouldn't notice most things. I think all we really need is to get out of the line and come at the pool from a different angle."

Dart nodded. She crouched down slightly, holding her head onto her body with one hand -- and crept to the side with Wolf, leaving Willow and a still tipsy Gabriel behind. They darted into the woods together, and Dart found herself sorely missing her unburned legs and unmangled body. It was hard enough to keep up with Wolf's graceful, lithe body when she had been fully intact -- he had that too-fluid to be believed way of moving that all elves did, combined with the practice and training of a lifetime of thieving work.

Just to make things extra annoying, Wolf was aware of how good he was. He moved back and caught at Dart before she tripped into the bush of golden stinging nettles. He showed her where to step to avoid making too much noise in the bush. He held up his hand to give time for a passing wolf with sleek, glowing fur that was patterned in colors of gold and silver to go by. And finally, he brought her to the pool of restoration. Just looking at it filled Dart with a sense of belonging and well being: A narrow circle of water ringed by golden stones, with a pathway leading up to it -- that pathway was the beginning of the line, and currently, a gorgeous looking half-orc man was standing, waiting for his turn. He was broad shouldered and muscular and pale green and just the kind of bestial man that Dart would have preferred in bed.

If only he hadn't looked dumber than a box of rocks. He picked at his teeth with a wooden twig and stared off into space with the glazed over look of soon to be butchered livestock.

The person in the pool was a golden haired, muscular warrior lass, who was lounging in the pool, her head tilted back as she sighed and relaxed. "Ah, verily, this is the shit," she said.

"Uh," the half-orc said, his voice slow and uncertain. "Dhokay."

Dart felt her irritation flash, like a firebolt into a fireball, to rage. Here was a line going back almost fifty people long, and these flea-brained chaotic good barbarian pukes, who spent all day in the afterlife hacking each other to pieces for fun, were wasting time and magical energy using a pool of restoration as a gods-be-fucking-damned sauna! She stepped forward and tried to summon some of her magic. Being dead had left her uncertain of her abilities -- but she was glad to feel a surge of fire energy tingle along her arm and then flash into her palm.

It was, in fact, far easier than it had been in the mortal realms. She was sure there was a explanation, but right now, she didn't particularly care. She pointed her flaming finger at the girl, her other hand on her head to keep it from falling off and ruining the moment. "What are you doing, you stupid bint?" She growled.

"Lass," the blond haired girl said, her arms spreading a bit wider as she made a point of relaxing so much that it moved from relaxing to 'presenting'. Her breasts surged above the water, the hard tips of her nipples peeking through the glowing liquid. "I appear to be relaxing." She grinned -- and Dart heard the words underneath them.

What are you going to do about it?

"Uhh, Gwin, I dun think tha's a good idea," the half-orc said.

"Oh, what's she going to do, kill m-"

Gwin the Barbarian vanished with a crack of displacing air.

###

"-e," Gwin finished. She blinked, her nude body glistening with beads of healing water. The fifty or so angelic warriors around her slowly looked down at her as they held their swords before them - all of them were arrayed in a grid pattern as they stood in formation before a golden tower, where an even more powerful looking female angel clad in golden armor and bearing a flaming sword in one hand stood on a balcony. The female angel lowered her sword and her hand -- the speech she had been in the middle of giving dying on her silver-painted lips.

"...who the bloody fuck is that!?" The female angel shouted, pointing down at Gwin.

"She's nude!" The angel beside her said.

"My purity! Augh!" Another angel screamed.

In horror, the entire formation broke and ran screaming for the hills, wings flaring as they flew off.

The female angel put her hand over her face, her shoulders drooping. "Fuck," she muttered.

Gwin blinked, then started to back slowly away from the courtyard.

"Oh no!" The female angel flew into the air, then darted down. She landed before Gwin, glaring at her. "You scared my entire fucking army off! So you? You're making it up to me."

Gwin spluttered. "W-Wha-...how!?"

The female angle grinned. "In the religion of Heldin -- whose heaven you've arrived in...males must be pure until they are mated by the Goddess."

Her chest armor hit the ground and Gwin's eyes widened.

"Women don't."

###

"Where did Gwin go?" the half-orc asked, his voice mournful as he looked at the empty pool -- the man behind him in the line coughing meaningfully.

The palm of the man behind the half-orc hit the half-orc's back. The half-orc staggered forward, arms cartwheeling through the air as he tried to keep himself balanced. Dart's hips slipped past the glowing water and she felt her form starting to heal -- energies flowing through her joints, connecting limbs that had been detached and soothing away the burn marks stretched across her skin. The half-orc was falling in slow motion and from the look of terror on his face, Dart started to wonder if maybe there was a reason why only one person used the pool of restoration at a time. The half-orc started to come to pieces too -- he had been hacked up pretty badly, though by something so fine that the cuts hadn't shown until his skin started peeling apart.

Then the two of them were in the broth.

Wolf watched the bubbling, biting his lip as the man who had been behind the half-orc stepped forward and rubbed his knuckles against his mouth, chewing on them nervously.